Watching Accident on Hill Road is not unlike being stuck in a windshield yourself.

Rating:

At one point in Accident on Hill Road, Sonam, played by Celina Jaitley and her boyfriend Sid, played by Abhimanyu Singh are trying to figure out how to kill a man.

The poor Prakash Srivastava, played by Farooq Shaikh, was hit by Sonam and has been stuck in the windshield of her car for more than a day. She is chasing a dream job, doesn?t want to risk a police investigation and therefore comes up with the bright idea of simply killing him.

Sid, who is a drug dealer and claims to have killed several people before, pulls out a gun. But Sonam stops him saying, people will hear the gunshot.

Sid, who obviously has never heard of silencers, marvels at her brains and says: Oh my baby, you are so smart.

These superbly dim-witted moments provide some comic relief in this otherwise tedious remake of the 2007 Hollywood film Stuck.

Director Mahesh Nair has reworked a few things but mostly Accident on Hill Road stays close to Stuck?s story of an aide in an old age home, who after a night of drink and drugs, slams her car into a pedestrian.

Overcome with panic and guilt, she drives home and leaves the man bleeding to death on her windshield.

A normal woman faces abnormal circumstances. She becomes unhinged and eventually resorts to murder.

Stuck was no classic but the film managed a few moments of tension and black humour. Accident on Hill Road can?t even recreate that.

The film is undone by its total lack of logic - in a city of 18 million, exactly one person sees Sonam drive home with a man hanging on her bonnet and its unintentionally comical dialogue. One conversation goes like this: Sonam tells Sid: Woh abhi tak gadi mein phasa hua hai to which Sid replies: Koi baat nahi, saab theek ho jayega.

Even Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro couldn't bring conviction to lines like this so what are Celina Jaitely and Abhimanyu Singh going to do. Celina, in a new hair-do, gets marks for sincerity. She breathes heavy, shakes, twitches and trembles but the effect is more comic than shocking.

Singh, who was so ferocious in Gulal, is reduced here to cool posturing and saying babes all the time. And Farooq Shaikh, an actor of great grace and talent, has the unenviable job of lying prone with his rear-end to the camera for most of the film. He just about manages to retain his dignity.

Watching Accident on Hill Road is not unlike being stuck in a windshield yourself.